Over the course of human history, military might has had dire consequences, including frequent wars, an enormous toll of death, injuries, and population displacement, immense financial cost, imperialist arrogance, military coups, and the diversion of resources from other areas of human life. Furthermore, military power has often been ineffective in safeguarding the national security that it is supposedly protecting. Rather than continuing to pour the wealth of nations into the failing system of national military might, how about adopting a less costly, more effective approach?
Published Articles by Lawrence Wittner
Despite much lofty rhetoric portraying the United States as a democracy, this nation has often resembled a plutocracy, in which the wealthy rule. The confusion owes a great deal to the fact that the United States, at its founding, was somewhat more democratic than its contemporaries. Another reason is that, over the course of its history, the country has gradually grown more democratic--although only by overcoming determined opposition from its traditional economic elites. The struggle between democracy and plutocracy continues today.
Amid growing international chaos, it should come as no surprise that nuclear dangers are increasing. Thanks to Donald Trump's evident unreliability, U.S. allies are now considering the creation of an enhanced nuclear capability, including the development of their own nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the nuclear arms race among the nuclear weapons-producing powers is escalating. But, with an approach grounded in international security, it is still possible to halt the slide toward disaster.
Although the nations of the world have pledged to respect a system of international law and global responsibility, the recent behavior of the governments of Russia, Israel, and the United States, based on the nationalist fantasies of their leaders, provides a sharp challenge to this arrangement. If humanity is to survive in coming decades, it is imperative that reckless competition and conflict among nations give way to cooperation and collective action. No nation can go it alone, for we are all part of one world and must act accordingly.
Donald Trump's arrogance -- based on the enormous power the United States exercises in world affairs and his own acquisition of vast wealth -- has produced his frequent berating of President Zelensky of Ukraine, as well as his glib talk of making Canada the 51st state and of seizing Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Gaza. It also lies behind Trump's disdain for the United Nations, where all countries -- the large and the small, the powerful and the weak -- have pledged to work for the common good.
The Trump administration is not only firing many thousands of federal government workers, but nullifying union contracts and paralyzing government agencies guaranteeing workers the right to union representation (the National Labor Relations Board) and banning employment discrimination (the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). As he has been following the Project 2025 playbook, he might also be en route to banning public employee unions and empowering the states to ban private employee unions and ignore federal minimum wage, overtime pay, and child labor laws.
The whirlwind of Trump administration foreign policy measures -- many reversing those of the Biden administration -- illustrates the fact that Americans have sharply different opinions about their relationship to other nations. At present, the America Firsters are clearly in control of the U.S. government. But the future is never predictable. Indeed, it's quite possible that there will be a revival of the impetus to build a global community -- one that can address the world's problems and even, perhaps, overcome them.
Given the weapons-obsession of the nine nuclear powers, the current prospect for an effective ban on nuclear weapons is bleak. But, longer-term, the revival of a massive nuclear disarmament movement, combined with pressure from an empowered United Nations, could bring these holdouts into the 2021 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and, thereby, avert nuclear catastrophe.
Although the World Bank recently reported that vast economic inequality persists throughout the world, the establishment of a global minimum wage would lift billions of people out of poverty while reducing corporate offshoring of jobs, aiding unions, and curbing mass migration.
The ICC's issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza has stirred up a considerable backlash. But, in fact, the world's major military powers have long shown disdain for the international organization, for it has the potential to investigate, prosecute, and convict their own government officials.